The Usual Format

-I am currently eating strawberry rhubarb pie right out of the bakery box. The kids think it's disgusting because of the way the strawberry juice pools in the pie tin, and refuse to even try a bite. More for me, suckers. If there is a better pie, I've yet to encounter it. I swear, when the strawberries are super ripe and the rhubarb is so tart, the mingled juices almost taste boozy. Or maybe it's just me.

-I took a belly dancing class Tuesday night, you guys! It was so, so fun, and now I'm all sore in my side muscles. I really want to do it again, though. It felt very graceful and sensual, such a departure from the usual Western exercise classes- it felt like something you maybe already knew how to do, and just needed to tap back in and remember it, if that makes sense. And actually, some of the moves reminded me of laboring (friends and family: what doesn't remind you of birth?) So much of the work of labor is moving the baby down into your pelvis, so a lot of the shifting and circling movements we were making with our hips in the class felt similar to what childbirth educators refer to as the baby dance. (Yes, har har, the baby dance that comes forty weeks after doing the original "baby dance.") I decided to take at least a few more classes and learn some of the main moves to keep in my bag of tricks as a doula someday. Maybe saying, "Try this cool belly dance move I know!" might sound more appealing and fun than just "Try rolling your hips."

-Good Lord I am turning into such a hippie.

-Jameson is in such a delicious stage right now. Eating everything in sight, or trying; sitting up and playing with his siblings; screeching with delight about baths and the swimming pool and the sight of someone he recognizes. When he's happy to see me, he buries his face into my shoulder and just nuzzles around like a baby chimp or something, sometimes chuckling with happiness. Oh, I will miss him so much. I'm so ridiculously sentimental that I start to miss things before they're even over. The last few days of a vacation are always half torture because, oh, soon we'll have to go home.

-Speaking of vacation, we're going to Canada next weekend with the fam, and I'm so excited! Jameson's not been there yet, and I know he is going to love the sand and water so very much. How well he'll love sleeping in his pack and play remains to be seen.

-This means I have to schlep down to the health department today and finally get a copy of his official birth certificate so that we can cross the border legally. How have I not done this yet? Get the birth certificate, I mean. I have legally crossed the border before.

-Tonight we're filming a commercial for the family coffee house. Apparently I have been given a speaking part. This is the kind of thing I would have been frothing at the mouth in excitement about as a kid. Now I'm all: is it too late to whiten my teeth and lose ten pounds? Do I need to get my hair professionally blown out for this? Ahhck!